Monday, July 23, 2012

#532 Pharoah Sanders - Karma

Continuing to hear everything ever from the immortal 1969.

This is basically a track review of the sprawling half-hour The Creator Has a Master Plan.

Is this jazz? It has the elements, but it seems to even transcend free jazz, dipping into some decidedly non-Western forms, drifting psychadelic and raw, full of horns making sounds beyond horns.

Free jazz is probably the right starting point - I've heard this compared to A Love Supreme, and at least for the first third or so, that seems like a good point of reference. Everything builds, and there is decidedly structure, but short of the core bass line that serves as the song's spine, none of this sounds the least bit planned, emerging from man like the creator's master plan. Things build beyond the boundaries of the Coltrane track though, as horns and piano rise infernal to lick the sky euphoric by the end.

The comparitively modest Colors seems like an afterthought by comparison, but provides a nice, tonal epilogue for the centerpiece.

If you've got the patience and the ambition, its an album that will take you places 3.5/5

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